Essay

The murder of more than 400 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai and My Khe by US soldiers on March 16, 1968, stands as one of the darkest days in the nation’s military history. It left an indelible stain on America’s record in Vietnam, the nation’s longest, least popular, and most...

Essay

The unpublished diary of Ella Jane Osborn (1881–1966) in the Gilder Lehrman Collection opens an extraordinary window into the daily experiences of one American woman stationed in a US army hospital in a dangerous and contested battle zone during the final year of World War I. Osborn’s daily entries serve as an uncensored record and provide an interesting counterpoint to the published writings by Ellen La Motte and Mary Borden, two American volunteer nurses whose polished, edited accounts of their activities documented the brutal nature of war devoid of nobility or ideals. Osborn’s handwritten diary permits us to peek over her shoulder and be there to observe the life of an American nurse stationed just miles away from the bloody battles of 1918-19.

Essay

What I know about the Vietnam War, I learned as a child from my father, Louis Raynor. At thirteen years old, I discovered an old, tattered, leather-bound diary in my parents’ chest of drawers. When I opened it, I immediately recognized my father’s handwriting. I was intrigued so I quietly took the small book and ran off to read it. Over the years, from his war diary and photographs, our many conversations, and oral history interviews, my father answered my endless questions about Vietnam.

Essay

North of Mexico’s border, most Americans know the 1846 conflict that established that boundary, (if they know it at all), as the training ground for Civil War heroes. Generals Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Stonewall Jackson, and George Meade first experienced military command during the twenty-one month US invasion of Mexico. The same was true for President Franklin Pierce and Confederate president Jefferson Davis, and Senators Joseph Lane and John Quitman. President Zachary Taylor was a commanding officer in Mexico, as was Pierce’s opponent in 1846, presidential candidate Winfield Scott.

Essay

“Disappointments,” wrote Private William Shepp, “are common in the army.” At the time, Shepp, an aspiring teacher from a small community in West Virginia, was pondering the seemingly unrewarding and unending work that he and the men of his engineering company were doing in support of the American Army then arriving by the thousands near Paris. He had himself arrived in France in the first week of April 1918 just as the German spring offensive, commonly known as the Ludendorff Offensive after its chief architect, had begun to threaten Paris. Shepp, however, seems to have been only vaguely aware of what was happening. Most of his news of the war came from old copies of the New York Herald or Stars and Stripes that he found along the way. To him, the date of his arrival meant nothing except for the coincidence of it landing on the first anniversary of America’s declaration of war.

Essay

The letters to Annie E. Cole and the schoolchildren of PS 5 on Staten Island chronicle the experiences of ordinary Americans of diverse ethnic backgrounds who were involved in an extraordinary event. They provide an enduring record of the wartime experiences of American servicemen during the First World War and demonstrate the important bonds formed between a community and its veterans. Writing to their former teacher enabled the men to open up and show their vulnerability. Their letters provide a critical glimpse of the emotional impact of war too often overlooked in discussions of combat and life in the military.